


The Sea Was Red

by sixwings (drfeels)



Category: Inazuma Eleven GO
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 16:18:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8899042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drfeels/pseuds/sixwings
Summary: Minamisawa Atsushi transfers to Gassan Kunimitsu after Raimon becomes infatuated with revolution, and finds himself infatuated with Hyoudou Tsukasa. He finds himself struggling with a tangle of guilt, an undefined desire for his new captain, and a lack of place to really call his own.





	1. minamisawa atsushi in early morning

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this fic about a year ago, and originally intended it to be quite short, but it go away from me and ended up at five parts. Looking back there are certainly some small plot points I would change if I had to do it again, but overall I'm very fulfilled by the result, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

He doesn’t tell them where he’s going, or that he’s even going at all, until the day before everything ends. 

There’s nothing but the wet sound of everyone chewing before Sangoku swallows first. His eyes are gentle. Concerned.

“You’re not coming back?”

Sangoku has failed to understand that not coming back is the entire point of transferring schools. He can’t go back. There’s no proper soccer here anymore, and anything that might look good to a top high school has already been ruined. There’s nothing for Minamisawa to go back to, even if he wanted to stay.

“I just want something that will look good on my records,” he says midway through a bite of katsu sandwich. It was chewable earlier but now it’s gone strangely dry and the bread is congealing on his tongue like glue, sticking to the sides of his throat when he swallows. “I can’t do that here anymore.”

“Where are you even going?” Amagi asks. “I thought Raimon is the best.”

“Was.” He balls up the saran wrap from his sandwich and shoves it into the open mouth of the trash can as he gets up. “It was.”

Kurumada makes a furious grunting noise like something that’s been caught in a bear trap. Amagi grits his teeth and looks like he can’t bring himself to finish the rest of his cutlet. The last time he looked that way is so long ago that Minamisawa can barely even place it in the timeline running through his head. Sangoku just looks defeated. His thick brows have bunched together and his thin mouth is set in a firm line. A muscle at the corner of it twitches. He doesn’t say anything else, none of them do.

It seems that all this time he’d thought Sangoku had his back. Friendship and sex are just friendship and sex, not love, but somehow Minamisawa had been under the impression that the gentleness Sangoku held him with at the very least came from a place of affection.

Sangoku only seems to ever have his back when he’s bending over it after practice in the locker room, when everyone else is already gone.

* * *

His mother keeps bringing in stacks of freshly folded laundry for him to pack, to the point where his entire closet is nearly empty. Every time she knocks he twitches, because he keeps expecting Sangoku and the others to have told someone, anyone, and that by the end of tonight either Shindou or that nuisance Tenma will be here, on his floor, drinking tea and begging him not to go.

Nobody comes, and he sleeps badly. 

His mind can’t do anything but toss around a whirl of feverish thoughts and his whole body is a bundle of nerves. Tomorrow, everything will be fine. Tomorrow he will be on a train ride that goes beyond the boundary of this prefecture, to a place where he can’t hear that senseless drivel that’s been dripping from Shindou’s lips and buzzing inside his head like a nest of hornets.

Of course Shindou can say what he wants about revolution, about divine winds and luck and fighting spirit. Shindou Takuto has had a guaranteed future since the time of his conception, before he even has lungs or teeth. Talented at soccer, talented at piano, a family with connections. Shindou can fight where he pleases and say anything he wants without suffering nightmares about the future being nothing but darkness that slowly cracks until even darkness gives away to nothing. Those kids don’t know anything about filling out endless applications for high school exams, trying to trace the path of a future that hasn’t even begun to exist yet.

When he finally sleeps it’s two a.m. and his head throbs from the constant stream of thought.

His phone buzzes on his desk, reminding him of the text message from Sangoku that he’s been ignoring for well over six hours.

* * *

 

> **sngk01@yahoo.jp:**
> 
> where are u going?

 

It’s 1:30pm. He’s been on the train several hours and he still hasn’t answered. He doesn’t know where to even start. If Sangoku didn’t want him to leave, maybe he should have held him tighter before all of this. Sunk in his teeth deep into the muscles of Minamisawa’s back and not let go. But Sangoku is kind and gentle, and his grip is always equally forgiving. He should have held him tight. Tighter. But he didn’t, he didn’t and now Minamisawa just wants to disappear off the face of the earth without a trace. Back there, at Raimon, there is nothing for him.

Erase the old part of himself from there, his habits, his assumptions of his teammates and start new. That is what this will give him. A new self.

His head lolls back and he finds himself slipping into sleep, a sleep which he does not wake from until they arrive.

* * *

He looks exactly like the mountains the school sits at the foot of.

In comparison to Shindou, who’s captain’s band always sat loosely around his sleeve and wrinkled in a way that was unbefitting, Hyoudou Tsukasa’s bright green band sits snugly around the strong, rippling muscles in his upper arm. His heavy-lidded eyes narrow as he shrewdly commands the warmups while Minamisawa watches from the balcony, Coach by his side.

“We take the Fifth’s doctrine seriously here,” he says sternly as he places a glossy jersey in Minamisawa’s hands. “I think if you work hard, you’ll fit in well.”

“That won’t be a problem, sir.”

“Hyoudou-kun has offered to personally make sure you’re caught up with the basic coursework, though thankfully it’s earlier in the year,” Coach continues. “He personally makes sure to take care of his teammates, he’s very reliable if you have trouble.”

“I’ll make sure to remember that.”

Hyoudou Tsukasa.

He eyes him again from the balcony, where hopefully he’s too far for his gaze to be traceable. He’s not. As the whistle blows signaling the end of morning practice, those heavy-lidded eyes turn up and their gaze locks. As he turns away Hyoudou stretches and the edge of his shirt lifts from his waistband. Minamisawa catches the briefest glimpse of a trail of dark hair dusting up his stomach, strong muscles and deep-set hip lines.

Something in the pit of his stomach thirsts.


	2. minamisawa atsushi in evening

He has survived three weeks of simultaneous piles of homework and practice, though saying it like that– _survived_ –makes it sound as though he was only hanging on by the tip of his teeth. Minamisawa has always had proficient enough talent in academics, and the curriculum here is heavier than Raimon, but Captain Hyoudou turned out to be a rather good solution. Coach had said a week but somehow Hyoudou has kept coming longer than that, usually after dinner. His hair is always a bit damp where the collar of his t-shirt rides up and catches the sweat that rolls down his neck, and he brings water with him, stored in an old cola bottle.

It’s getting into summer, and there’s humidity here that seeps through the concrete walls and rubs its hands on everything left out to rot. As he checks his phone he is reminded, yet again, of something else that’s still rotting, festering and left to die. Sangoku’s text still sits there. He hasn’t replied, still doesn’t know if he wants to or even can at this point. Sangoku has taken up Line now, anyway, which is a trap in itself because Minamisawa is well aware that if he clicks on the messages it will give him away. Sangoku will see he’s read them, see he’s still alive and his heart is still pulsing away in the cavern of his ribs, and somehow knowing Sangoku will know that makes ignoring him much, much harder.

“Something wrong?” Hyoudou’s deep but calming voice cuts through the high-pitched whine that’s searing the back of his brain as he stares at his hands.  
  
“Nothing, no.” He picks his pencil back up and clicks a bit more lead out of the cartridge.

Hyoudou resumes underlining a passage in the novel they’ve been studying, mumbling something under his breath. Despite his exterior he’s been surprisingly friendly and comfortable as a captain. Stern, demanding, but somehow with an undercurrent of approachability.

Minamisawa’s phone buzzes so hard it rattles the surface of the table. Line, again. But not Sangoku, surprisingly, or anyone else he’d expected.

 

 

> **krrma011:**
> 
> _hvnt seen u lately??_
> 
> _hav u been busy??_
> 
> **(krrma011 is typing…)**
> 
> _tenma’s still dumb wwwww_

 

“Is it important?” Hyoudou begins to stack up his books and gathers his pencils back into his pouch. “It’s about time for us to be done anyway. Don’t forget morning practice. Extra lap every minute you’re late.”  
  
“It’s nothing. And I know,” he smirks. “Have I ever even been late?”  
  
“There’s always a first time for everything.”  
  
The door lock clicks shut, and as Minamisawa sets his phone back on the small table they’d moved to the center of the room, it buzzes violently again, followed by the soft click of wood rolling along a flat surface.  
**  
**

 

> **krrma011:** _  
> _
> 
> _r u there????_

He tosses it on the bed and sets his eyes on the second noise: Hyoudou’s pencil, freshly sharpened but forgotten. It’s still sitting on the table, and the way it’s trembling from the vibration’s aftershock makes it seem like a living being. Doraemon pattern. Bought himself? Is that something he likes? A gift? An accident?

He shoves the table aside roughly and lays on the floor, pencil clutched firmly in his fist.

Underneath his head, Hyoudou’s cushion is still radiating stolen body heat. His scalp tingles. His whole body prickles. That thirst lays waiting in the deepest pit of his belly, the twelfth circle of hell. It rises like stomach acid, crawls up his throat and it aches.

He has had his number of people.  

Raimon, that first year, had been some sort of awakening that bloomed inside all the hollow spaces of his body. Some people called it gross, in whispers behind the backs of others, but the more he indulged himself in it, the more he enjoyed being everything he was, the less he began to care about the humming of the hive.

He could barely remember the vivid details of his first time anymore, because again and again it’d been written over. The first time with one person was different from the first with another, and he was by no definition in any language a virgin, but the newness and searing sharpness of it– _sex_ –never really dulled no matter how many times it happened over and over.

At Raimon there had been a sense of ease about it all, he’d been interwoven with the social hierarchy long enough that he knew who he could pull down to drown with him, who wouldn’t tell a soul. And then, when finally they’d all come and gone, he’d somehow been offered Sangoku. At the end of it all, that still eluded him, and maybe that’s why he couldn’t bring himself to answer that festering string of words buried in the depths of his phone, because he still didn’t know what had been expected of him. Was the kindness merely a return for mutual benefit, and just as shallow as it seemed, or was it a deeper pool that had dark water and no visible bottom?

As a sex friend, he no longer desired Sangoku Taichi. But as a friend…as a real, honest friend, much as he was trying to push the feeling to the back of his head, he missed him. Amagi, Sangoku, Kurumada. Even Kurama, much as he was unable to take a hint most times. Idiots, every last one of them, but idiots he knew his place with.

By the time he lifts out of the fog of thought, Hyoudou’s pillow has gone cold under his head, and his fingers are slick with sweat where he’s gripping the pencil in his fist.

He is still so very, very thirsty.

* * *

  
It catches the corner of his eye two days later, during the break between Math and Literature. It’s sticking out of the schoolbag of the girl next to him, a fashion magazine with some photos sticking out between the pages. The sliver of that undercut he can see is too distinct for the picture to not be who he thinks it is.

“Pictures of Hyoudou-san,” he says slyly, and a bit of red blooms instantly under her cheeks.  
  
“I’m just his fan,” she explains, “I just have some pictures because I find he looks so striking on the field, and my friend photographs for the school newspaper so she gives me extras sometimes. I’m not in his fanclub, or anything like that…I just admire his strength!”  
  
The words come out so fast that he doesn’t really make sense of any of them.

He unzips his pencil case and pulls out the pencil he secretly cannot bring himself to give back to Hyoudou.

“Would you be interested in a trade?”

  
  
* * *

  
He stores the photo the way he’d store erotic magazines, if he had any. Center desk drawer, hidden in a book of soccer theoretics that he never uses, which is stacked under his math textbook, literature study materials and a pile of extra notebooks. A fortress of distraction.

It’s Saturday, practice is over, and tomorrow is a free day. He’s had a few of them so far, but none of them amount to anything. The team seems to hang around with each other, at least, but he’s unsure what their idea of a free day even consists of.

He considers a nap, listening to music, surfing the net and even completing his homework already before there’s a knock on his door that breaks the monotony of his self-imposed isolation.

It’s Tsukishima, one of the midfielders, with Ichimonji hovering behind him.

“We’re watchin’ a movie,” he says, hand placed firmly on his hip as he takes up as much space as possible in  Minamisawa’s doorway. “Wanna join us?”

“Is it gonna be any good?”

Ichimonji smirks and pokes his head over Tsukishima’s shoulder. “Heh. Like we’d invite you if it wasn’t? It’s gonna be great, we got it from the upperclassmen in 1-D, it’s good stuff.”

He slips on his indoor slippers and sweat jacket and follows them out into the hall, patting his pocket for his keys and phone before he closes it completely. They lead him down to one of the other rooms, the same size as his. It’s cramped with about twelve of the team members stuffed in, all huddled around a stolen TV, from one of the common areas. It’s already hot just from the sheer amount of body heat in such a small space.

Hyoudou is in the corner, sitting on one of the chairs, mildly inattentive.

Minamisawa settles himself in one of the empty spaces left on the edge of the bed, leg dangling over the side of the deep blue comforter, dorm-standard issue. Close enough to Hyoudou to glance back, but not so close there’s time to talk without causing an inconvenience. He settles for the slyest glance at Hyoudou’s face–slightly blank, lost in thought and fixated at some spot on the floor–before Ichimonji is at the front of the room, stepping over a tangle of legs to get at the DVD player and hushing everyone he comes into contact with.

Minamisawa catches sight of the DVD box, which is garish pink. It’s covered in bubble letters and hearts, and most importantly, a giant set of tits. _Shy Slut Mariko-chan._

He can’t help but let out a noise that sounds like a laugh being strangled. He didn’t take that for this type of team, or school, and most importantly, he didn’t take Hyoudou as that type of captain.

But yet here they all were.

The lights flicker off and everything becomes nothing but the blue glow of the TV screen light, everyone’s faces fixated in high contrast.

His phone buzzes in his pocket.

He ignores it.

On-screen, Mariko-chan screams.

There is a hot, wet slurping sound.

His phone buzzes again.

“Turn it _off_ ,” someone hisses.

Mariko-chan gasps. Her breasts swell each time she breathes in.

The point of this movie night somehow eludes him, because it seems extremely uncomfortable to watch some of his teammates squirming restlessly on the floor, while others sit so still it seems like they don’t even need to breathe.

His eyes flick back. Hyoudou.

His eyes are turned away from the screen, but the heat from his face is palpable, even in the dim blue light. He has his hand over his mouth, like he’s going to be sick. Then he sees it, the outline pushing gently against the loose fabric of Hyoudou’s sweatpants. Between his legs.

Arousal.

His Adam’s apple sticks in his throat as he swallows. A dizziness hits him, that same sickness Hyoudou probably feels. He’s so thirsty. Water. He needs a drink.

Violent buzzing from inside his pocket.

“Oi, who the fuck is that? I thought I told you to shut it off.”

His legs slip off the bed on auto-pilot and he’s slipping through the door, back into the brightness of the corridor. It’s like a sanctuary, the keening of Mariko-chan still audible but faint as the blue light flickers in the space under the doorway.

He feels for change in his pocket, heads towards the vending machines that sit in their own little room next to the microwaves. His head is still spinning with the hot dizziness that pools in his stomach and lips and fingertips and between his thighs. Calpis, maybe. Or barley tea. No, no, coffee. Black coffee. It’s only 8pm. Black coffee.

The electronic hum of the machines greets him as a door clicks open. Mariko-chan gets louder, then quieter as the sound of a metallic latch clicks into place. Heavy steps behind him. Heavy breath.

Hyoudou rounds the corner and freezes as both their eyes meet.

Redness decorates his cheeks. He’s gently biting the inside of his lip, hands nervously clutching his elbows. The dampness that normally wets the hair at the nape of his neck is a pool. He looks violently ill.

Between his legs is another story.

Illness is relative to the symptoms.

Minamisawa has no idea if he should say the dangerous things on the tip of his tongue. He’s said them a hundred times before. It’s so easy, once you say it, people just melt and get pulled under the tide of the sea, the current of his tongue, rolling waves of his hips and fingertips.

“I needed a dri–”

“Do you want me,” Minamisawa finds himself saying, launching head-on into something so dangerous he doesn’t even have the time to hesitate, “to help you take care of that?”

Hyoudou follows his gaze, and shifts his legs as though it can be covered up, but it’s been done. He won’t forget the offer, no matter what happens, and nothing can ever be exactly as it has been. The silence itches against Minamisawa’s skin. He moves forward.

His hand rests against the waistband of Hyoudou’s sweats, then down, he catches his thumb on the edge of them and begins to pull. There is no resistance. This really is that easy, for a goalie Hyoudou’s reaction time is better than this, mere milliseconds. He is letting this be thrust upon him, he is accepting it. Minamisawa pushes him back against the tile wall with the full force of his body weight, and Hyoudou lets him.

His underwear is white, boxer briefs. There’s a circle of dampness pooling on the front. Minamisawa bends, mouths over it and breathes hot, wet breaths as he kneels.

“You can look away if it’s gross,” he murmurs.

Hyoudou’s face is already laying to the side, eyes open but paralyzed, staring at the single potted plant in the corner. One hand is over his mouth, pressing dimples into the skin of his cheeks. The other hand–large, strong, rough with calluses–gently cups the back of Minamisawa’s head, pausing before the fingers entwine with his hair.

He slides the briefs down, just enough that he can lick without leaving Hyoudou completely bare here in the corridor. It makes it so he has to bury his face deep. Hyoudou’s thick patch of hair tickles his nose. It smells like soap and the musk of new sweat and that thick, heady scent of arousal that soaks everything here between his thighs. Hyoudou’s muscles tense and he makes a choked noise through his fingers as Minamisawa takes the tip of his erection on his tongue. It’s so hot, deeply salty and bitter.

Hyoudou still has his head turned to the side. He isn’t looking, isn’t seeing anything actually in the room. His deep-set red eyes have long glazed over.

Minamisawa takes him deeper, lavishes the thickness and warmth on his tongue. His soft lips cover white teeth like pearls as he draws him in, sucks and licks.

Hyoudou still isn’t looking.

He traces the underside of the shaft, the veins, clasps his hand around what he can’t take in and strokes at it. He sucks the head deeply with such a violent noise that he can’t hear anything else, the rest of the world doesn’t exist anymore. He buries himself under the lapping of his own tongue.

Hyoudou gasps.

Minamisawa’s eyes turn up, and he sees bright red through his lashes.

Hyoudou’s thighs shake violently as he comes. It’s thick, strong-tasting. He swallows it all without question. It’s not a taste he cares for but no worse than bitter medicine. He wipes a drop off his lip with his thumb and stands up.

He’s looking at him now, but it’s impossible to gauge what those eyes are actually seeing, what he’s feeling. Minamisawa smiles, and he wonders what Hyoudou sees in that smile as it reflects in the endless dark pool of his pupils. A joke? Pride? Pity?

_Hunger._

“Do you have ten yen?” he finds himself asking as the shifting behind him suggests Hyoudou is pulling up his pants. “I’m short.”

Nothing.

He shifts through his pockets again and finds a hundred coin hiding under his keys.

Behind him, the sound of running.

The machine hums to life as he slides the coins in, one after the other. What settles in his chest is both satisfaction and anxiety, whirling together in a storm. Things can now never be the same ever again. He doesn’t know if that’s for better or worse.

Black coffee it is.


	3. minamisawa atsushi after dark

He will only meet eyes during practice.

That seems to be Hyoudou’s new code of law as summer continues to creep in, drowning out spring for good with a suffocating rainy-season humidity. With the Holy Road finals nearing, practice has been endless. With homework on top of that, there is barely time for anything else but eating and sleeping.

Hyoudou has stopped coming to his room after dinner.

It’s been nearly a week but the taste still lingers on his tongue sometimes, a phantom that comes to him right before he falls asleep. It feels like all of it was a hazy dream, and so long ago. Time passes quickly on the field, but once he leaves everything slows down. It’s like sleepwalking.

The closer finals come, the more and more his heart beats out like a war drum. Raimon has risen. He’d half-expected it, somehow, but watching their climb up the leaderboards each week has been a personal agony, and now they barely have any time left before they’ll meet on the pitch.

He will be face-to-face with people he hasn’t seen in over a month, people he used to see so often that he breathed together with them like they were all part of the same body. Saying it that way–a month–makes it feel like time has lost all sense and meaning, because a month is barely anything but still long enough that he doesn’t even feel like he’s the same person anymore.

Black coffee.

He’s been washing everything down with it that night, partially to ward off the all-consuming tiredness that threatens to puppet his corpse if he doesn’t stay aware. He grabs spare change from the top drawer of desk, not even bothering to close it as he heads down the hall. The dexterity of his brain’s auto-pilot is incredible, because by the time he remembers blinking again he’s back in front of his own door with the cold can rolling against his fingertips.

He downs a quarter of it and sets it next to his lamp. Sits back down on the edge of his chair, shuts the top drawer and brushes off the wave of melancholy that looms. He begins to dig his literature guides out of the center drawer of his desk, and inevitably he’s reminded of what lurks in the layers beneath them. The corner of the soccer theoretics guide sticks out from underneath his math textbook, goading him.

Hyoudou is stuck between pages thirty-two and thirty-three, at the start of the chapter about dribbling techniques.

He’s briefly forgotten the strikingness of the picture. Hyoudou turned to the side, expression stern but satisfied, photographed from a slightly back-left angle. His eyes are turned away from the camera, towards someone off-screen.

Red flickers across his consciousness.

That is still the vividness that brings a heat to his skin when he thinks about what he’s done. There’s phantom taste, phantom scent, phantom touch. The ghostly heat of his skin. But that red isn’t a ghost. It’s still alive.

It’s there every day across the field, during the times when Hyoudou allows their eyes to meet.

That night he’d run away, maybe back to a place where Minamisawa’s tongue was still planted firmly in-cheek and not in-between his legs. He still hadn’t said anything about it, and Minamisawa would be convinced Hyoudou had wiped it from all memory if not for those eyes.

A chill runs up the back of his scalp. He rubs at the front of his sweats and holds the photo between his lips as he sinks his hands underneath the waistband. This isn’t something he does, usually there is relief somewhere else, someone to temporarily attach bodies with to relieve the tension that knots his whole body into a tangle of electric wires.

He lets the photo drop from his lips to the desk and traces every part of it with his gaze, the curve of Hyoudou’s neck, back of the skull, forehead. The lines of his lashes, nose, lips, the edges of the teeth that peek out from inside his mouth, the tip of his tongue.

He tries so hard to remember the slowly decaying sensation of Hyoudou’s legs weakening beneath his mouth.

It’s not enough. 

He sighs, wipes his fingers on a spare tissue and returns the photo to its prison in the center desk drawer.

Three hours later when he finally sleeps, all he dreams of is bright red.

* * *

He is late for afternoon practice.

As he double knots his spikes and tears onto the field, the disapproval is palpable. Lateness is frowned upon here. 

“Minamisawa!” Hyoudou’s voice barks from across the field. “It’s been fifteen minutes!”

“I’m sorry.”

“You know the rules.”

He’s a half-step away from starting fifteen laps of hell when “Captain,” Shibata grumbles. “We can’t do Tactics Cycle a member short, and we need to re-sharpen it before finals. Can’t he like, do them afterwards? You let Tsukishima do the same thing last week.”

Hyoudou sucks in a sharp breath, the kind that suggests it is against every one of his principles to negotiate. 

“Talk to me after practice, then,” he says. His eyes cut through Minamisawa without even looking directly at him, and he walks off without another word. 

Minamisawa follows Shibata off to the center of the field as the second team lines up and prepares for full-out assault. He tenses his calves. Everything prickles with anticipation, heavy and crackling like air before a storm. It’s only a split second before the command comes, straight and sharp and cutting through everything else in his head.

His brain clicks into auto-pilot as he begins to move.

* * *

Practice becomes enough of an obsession that they lose themselves in it, and by the time Coach returns from the meeting he had been summoned to halfway through, he seems surprised to still find any of them there at all. It’s already five minutes past dinner, and he orders them to drop everything and hit the showers. “If you don’t eat,” he says, “you might as well be telling me you don’t give a damn about your team. Your body is your machine. Respect it.”

Hyoudou catches ahold of him when he’s fresh from the shower. 

“After dinner, here.” 

He clips his words short as they will go, nearly losing letters in the process. His eyes are averting themselves so fully that Minamisawa can see the muscles twitching. It’s clear he’s doing his best to avoid confronting Minamisawa’s nakedness in a way he hasn’t before. Before, it was merely a body. Now it seems Hyoudou regards his nakedness as sexual.

It’s so very promising.

He finds himself leaning in closer so his still-damp thigh brushes against Hyoudou’s tracksuit, leaving a very faint wet stain. “Whatever you need, _Captain_.”

* * *

As he gathers up his warm-up suit, his phone buzzes in his pocket. It hasn’t had anything to say in over a week. He was beginning to think Sangoku had given up, or at the very least, gotten too busy to bother.

It’s the latter, it seems.

 

> **sngk01:**
> 
> hey, did you hear? we won the preliminaries!!!!! we’re going to be in the holy road finals. watch us if you can!!

It is finally something he feels like he can properly respond to.

 

> _mnmzawa is typing…_
> 
> **mnmzawa:**
> 
> good luck.

* * *

The woods are still slightly chilly now that the sun has set. Hyoudou’s ahead of him, a little too far in the darkness to properly see but Minamisawa can hear his breaths and the steady drum of his feet against the soil. Every now and then the trees part at the right angle that the waxing moon trickles through. Hyoudou hasn’t said how long this trail goes, when it ends, or when he expects Minamisawa to stop.

He just keeps running.

Eventually Hyoudou stops in a clearing. He doesn’t say anything. The moon hangs high above the mountains and reflects off his eyes. He rolls his neck, flexes his muscles, and gestures towards the path again. They head back down, even faster now that it’s downhill and there’s no choice for Minamisawa but to keep moving at this speed so he doesn’t trip over his own legs. His lungs begin to burn from the speed he’s moving at. Hyoudou’s endurance is incredible at the rate he’s going.

Everything smells like it’s about to rain.

They are lucky to make it inside the safety of the locker room’s back door before it begins to trickle down.

In the searing fluorescence of the locker room lights, Hyoudou’s t-shirt is blooming with sweat. His bangs are slick to his forehead, askew and stuck together in random clumps. He strips his t-shirt off the rippling muscles of his back gleam. He strips down his lower half and grabs his towel from his locker. 

Minamisawa grabs his own and follows suit.

In the shower nothing separates them but a thin metal partition. It’s the closest they’ve been to each other, and Minamisawa can’t help but take the moment to glance over at Hyoudou, strong shoulders and broad back, everything covered with a fine dusting of black hair.

The second time he tries to steal a glance, he realizes Hyoudou’s glancing back. But then his head turns the slightest angle and it’s not a glance, but a full-on look. Red-hot eyes that still gleam with the same moonlight cut through the deepest part of Minamisawa and stir up a hunger he’s been trying to ignore into submission for the past hour.

“I thought you were avoiding me,” he smirks, expecting Hyoudou to look away, but his gaze stays fixed. 

The water runs on as a white-noise backdrop but Hyoudou stays still, not even moving to wet the bar of soap in his hand.

“I was.”

“What changed?”

His fingernails dig in and leave little crescents on the soap bar as he foams the surface and smears it under his arms. “Nobody else is around right now.” 

“So…if someone else walked in right now, you’d go back to avoiding me?” He can’t help but let a slow, sly grin spread across his face. “Why’s that?”

“You know.”

He does. He knows very, very well.

Hyoudou Tsukasa is afraid of what he thinks he saw that night.

Maybe he’s not wrong.

“But nobody’s here right now, so that changes things?”

“That’s what I just said.”

He puts the soap back into the dish and opens the shampoo.  It perfumes the room when it meets the hot water. Everything smells like Hyoudou. The humid drops of it stick to Minamisawa’s face, his cheeks, his lips, coat the tips of his long eyelashes. He should really start washing. He’s wasting water. 

He runs his tongue across the edge of his teeth, and Hyoudou turns his face away. He begins rinsing shampoo while staring very intently at the wall, but the backs of his ears burn bright red. Minamisawa has a feeling Hyoudou is thankful for the partition between them.

Something else might be rising besides the steam. 

“Did you like it?”

Hyoudou stops moving.

“You _did_ like it.”

Hyoudou’s mouth twists into a frown. “I didn’t say that.”

“You don’t have to, but you keep saying it anyway. You’re avoiding me,” he can’t help a small laugh that escapes. “You’re scared.”

Hyoudou finally faces him directly for the first time in so many days. His mouth is set in a line, brow furrowed, and his eyes are fully fixed on Minamisawa’s.

“I don’t know what I might do if I’m around you again.”

“Did you think about me?” 

“I thought about a lot of things.”

Minamisawa shuts off his shower head and slowly begins to edge himself out of his stall. His heart is pumping and blood rushes in his ears like the roar of a hurricane. The steady white noise of the water droplets streaming out from Hyoudou’s shower form an eerie backdrop where despite them everything feels silent. Hyoudou’s eyes still haven’t left his. They just watch as he comes around the partition.

Closer.

Minamisawa’s sloppy wet footsteps echo like thunder as he pulls his feet off the floor one after the other.

This is beyond the point of far gone. This is beyond accidental. This is beyond falling into the sea, this is diving.

His body stops just shy of the reach of Hyoudou’s fingertips.

He’s about to ask something but Hyoudou’s fingers reach him. The water droplets on them are still hot. It feels like sleepwalking again but Hyoudou pulls him in and before either of them say anything it seems Hyoudou has decided and he pulls them together so tightly that the water cupped between their torsos gushes and overflows.

He can see every droplet shining on Hyoudou’s eyelashes as Hyoudou cups his hand around the back of Minamisawa’s head and crushes their mouths together.

It’s clumsy. 

Their teeth scrape and it’s going to bruise and it’s clumsy but Hyoudou’s wet skin rubs against his and his teeth graze Minamisawa’s lower lip and his hands dig so tightly into Minamisawa’s skin that he feels like his body will go numb. Hyoudou’s pulse pounds through his thumb into Minamisawa’s skin, his bones, his bloodstream. It merges. Hyoudou’s shoulders are broad and his muscles are thick and hard. He offers not softness but solidity. He leans against the partition and brings Minamisawa with him and they slide to the floor just like that, Hyoudou’s flushed lips desperately sucking every part of Minamisawa’s flesh they can obtain, ears-jaw-neck-collarbones-ribcage. Minamisawa arches his back and stretches his neck and water flows into his eye and he hisses and blink. Everything goes blurry for a moment and when the clarity returns he’s sitting in Hyoudou’s lap and Hyoudou looks like he’s red with fever.

He swallows hard and his body shivers so much that he feels nauseous. He’s sharply aware of the arousal between his legs, the heat Hyoudou has brought about in him. The heat that has been there for so long, simmering under the surface that’s now bubbled up, boiling and searing. It scorches.

He braces himself against Hyoudou’s chest and reaches across the floor for the conditioner bottle that’s tipped over into their struggle and is leaking into the drain. He’s thankful Hyoudou is too practical and has gotten standard unscented and pours it into his hand without a second thought.

Hyoudou eyes him intently, almost in disbelief, as he parts his legs and inserts a finger inside himself.

His lips part with a soft gasp. It’s been too long since the last time he’s done this and he’s become tighter than he remembers being. But it feels good, so good as he stirs himself up and inserts another, rolls his hips against Hyoudou for stimulation and moans. He can feel Hyoudou under him, feel as Hyoudou’s arousal gets tighter and thicker the longer he watches.

He pushes Hyoudou down and sits himself on his belly, braces his knees against the slick tile floor and starts to fill himself.

It hurts. It’s not much, and it passes, but he becomes aware of how large Hyoudou is, so large he’s never felt this kind of sex before. It fills up everything, slides inside and fills him so full that he feels like he can’t even move. It’s beautiful. His breaths stick in his throat and his heart pounds and his boiling hunger claws out of his stomach, white-hot and burning like a star.

He can’t feel his body anymore; He can feel every part of his body too sharply.

He’s not aware of anything; he’s aware of everything.

Every one of his nerves has become a small searing pile of ashes and his body is on fire.

Hyoudou finally touches him, brushes a gentle hand against his hip.

His stomach drops out and he feels like melting.

Inside him, Hyoudou shifts.

“It’s so hot,” Minamisawa hears him whisper, though it comes out distorted through the ever-present rush of the shower. 

He begins the slow rhythm of his hips against Hyoudou. Beneath his thighs he can feel Hyoudou’s body rise and fall with each breath, each shudder. He’s forced to go agonizingly slow, his muscles are weak and barely holding. His legs shake. Hyoudou’s hand on this thigh, stroking. The other on his hip, holding him firmly in place. Underneath him, Hyoudou stirs. 

An earthquake opens the seafloor and swallows him whole.

He can’t breathe, and the heat that is engulfing his skin tingles through his lips and bones and between his thighs and then inside him and he feels himself tighten around Hyoudou. His body burns with fever as it registers.

Hyoudou’s coming inside of him.

His body seizes sharply, violently, and he can’t control the voice that comes from his own throat, that bounces off the empty walls of the locker room. His muscles give. It sears into his bones, like white-hot light from the waxing moon. If his lips form words, he does not know what they are, and he cannot even hear them over the roar of his own blood.

He just keeps falling, further, gently floating down in a sense of numbness and heavy breaths. His body flushes with fever. He bears down against Hyoudou’s hips and pushes up, further, harder. His muscles ache. His bones ache. He’s come on Hyoudou’s stomach, the droplets lay across the skin of his belly like pearls.

It’s hot.

Hyoudou kisses him with swollen lips and runs callused fingers down his spine.

His body is nothing but sinew and bone char as he cradles himself against Hyoudou’s chest and breathes deeply. The shower still roars on, washing everything down the drain as they sit there together without a word.

This might be what it feels like to burn to death.


	4. minamisawa atsushi at midnight

Hyoudou Tsukasa has become voracious. 

Literally.

He is in the middle of downing his pork cutlet bowl at twice the speed of a normal person. Grains of rice stick to his bottom lip as he swallows, then washes it down with half a glass of water.

Training the past few days has been more difficult than usual.

Recreation has also been outside the usual.

Minamisawa allows himself an extra shared look with Hyoudou across the the dining hall table. All it takes is a flutter and a half of his heart beat.

A one-two pumping of blood through his veins and the searing half-second silent gap between them.

Hyoudou’s eyes flicker and he knows Hyoudou has understood.

They’ve been exchanging hot breath and saliva often enough now that Minamisawa’s mouth constantly has a different taste in it then it used to. The taste of Hyoudou on his tongue, that phantom taste, isn’t a phantom anymore.

It’s a constant.

He follows the sound of Hyoudou’s heavy footsteps through the soccer building, outside across the rain-dampened grass. Hyoudou pulls him in for a kiss, then another.

The inside of the shed smells like a few decades of must and mildew, but the mats Hyoudou lays him down on top of are freshly cleaned. Hyoudou presses a quick, hot kiss to his jaw and reaches in his pants pocket for the keys.

He unzips his jacket as Hyoudou locks the door from the inside.

* * *

Minamisawa slowly begins to sever his heart from his body as the calendar keeps turning over new days. At first the match against Raimon is two weeks away, then six days, then five. Each day is practice, where he can bury his head, and Hyoudou, where he drowns his body.

If Hyoudou wants them to slow down, he doesn’t say so. It’s not always sex, sometimes it’s just quick things, the rubbing of two bodies together in a hurried desire. It feels like it barely even has a direction, or a name. But it’s constant. It’s a need.

It might be the only thing keeping Minamisawa from going crazy.

But whenever he comes to Hyoudou in the evening, no matter where, Hyoudou always seems like he’s waiting.

Hyoudou has become warm again, too. The small touches don’t go unnoticed, the brush of a hand across Minamisawa’s shoulder at practice, the pats against his back. They’ve nearly become one machine. Breakfast together with the team, morning practice, lunch together with the team, afternoon practice. Dinner together with the team. Sex together. The sensation of searing has not left his bones.

It has been warm, almost too warm.

Hyoudou seems to always be in the process of slowly burning up. His skin is always warm to the touch, body always rolling with sweat under his arms and at the nape of his neck. After long practice sessions the tank he wears under his keeper jersey is nearly transparent, sticking to him in places that now Minamisawa thinks he wants to taste.

He’s been to more back rooms of the academy in the past week and a half then the past month he’s been here.

Today was the equipment shed. 

Yesterday, Minamisawa’s room.

The day before that, the locker room again.

Hyoudou’s room has still gone untouched, a sanctuary. He’s never been, he doesn’t even know what the inside might be like. It’s hard to imagine Hyoudou with anything more than minimal needs, study books and lamps and pencils and soccer magazines.

His phone rumbles against his thigh.

Since his reply to Sangoku on Line it’d begun to spark back to life again, and now it was gradually being filled with messages asking too many questions he wasn’t sure about answering.

 

> **krrma011:**
> 
> did u hear we r in the finals???
> 
> **amapan:**
> 
> make sure u watch the finals ok!!! ✧⁺⸜(●′▾‵●)⸝⁺✧
> 
> **kurumada2:**
> 
> we’re gonna fight fight!!! the fifth sector is going down!!
> 
> **sngk01:**
> 
> have you heard? our first opponent is gassan kunimitsu!!

He closes his phone.

In a few days, they’ll have their answer. 

He’ll crush them. In a few days his phone will probably lie dead and cold.

He briefly considers telling them the truth, but quickly dismisses any notions of it.

Still, he opens his phone again. 

 

> _mnmzawa is typing…_
> 
> **mnmzawa:**
> 
> i’ve heard.

* * *

Thursday is the day the careful balance of everything starts to boil over.

Maybe he’s been walking across a glass bridge for longer than he’s realized.

Morning is normal. Breakfast is normal. School is normal. By lunch it’s adding up to be a fairly average day and the only thing to really look forward to is afternoon practice, and the things that come after that.

But they don’t.

After practice, Hyoudou disappears. He’s not anywhere to be found at dinner, and afterwards the door to his room is still cold. There’s no crack of light peering out from under it, no signs of life.

The frustration and restlessness inside Minamisawa begins to stir from sleep.

He zips up his track jacket and heads down to the vending machines. The old electric hum is still there, but otherwise they’re deserted. His lids feel a touch heavier when he blinks than usual, so he sifts some change out from his pocket and exchanges it for the cold embrace of a can of black iced coffee.

He hopes Hyoudou doesn’t mind the taste.

Everything is eerily quiet to the point where he can hear his brain’s high-pitched whine tickling the insides of his ears. He heads down the staircase to the first floor in hopes maybe he’s in the central commons, but it’s empty too. Hyoudou’s not in the dorm’s small kitchen either, and Minamisawa has a feeling prickling at the nape of his neck, one that says Hyoudou is not the type to visit the other’s rooms much when he’s alone.

His attention turns on the quiet and pitch-black door to where the dorms connect to the school.

Locked.

Cold breeze whistles from the door parallel to it, the door to the outdoor sports facilities. It’s crudely propped open with a rock. Everything outside is dark, glistening wetly where it’s lit by the glow from the school’s outdoor security lights.

There’s no moon tonight, only clouds.

Then in the distance there’s a scream, no, a _roar_. Something rumbling and eerie sends a shockwave through the atmosphere. Minamisawa watches the shimmering miasma and violet halo of light that explodes in the distance from behind a hill. 

It’s inhuman.

In spite of that, he knows exactly what it is.

He’s seen it exactly twice since coming here, and never for long, but the feeling is something that you remember. The atmospheric pressure becomes so thick that it feels like he’s sucking in cotton through your lungs and all his muscles are bolted to iron plates. He’d felt it before, that time with Shindou, those flukes, but this is so much more than that.

This is one that’s been born for far far longer.

When he reaches the point of origin, it becomes clear Hyoudou is goaltending for no-one.

The outdoor field lights are on and a gentle trickle of rain is blowing here and there, but he’s practicing with one of those large keeper training machines that look like a fighter jet’s gatling gun.

As Minamisawa approaches, sneakers sloshing loudly in the muddy grass, the keshin vanishes into the base of Hyoudou’s spine.

The air thins.

Hyoudou wipes the sweat off his forehead with one of his gloves and breathes deep. Minamisawa can’t decide if Hyoudou’s expression says he was expecting him or if he wasn’t expecting him at all.

“I was looking for you,” Minamisawa says as he comes to a stop next to the far goalpost. He fingers one of the dents in the frame. It’s fresh. Whatever Hyoudou has been practicing against is abnormal. “I couldn’t find you after dinner.”

Hyoudou gestures to an empty bento on the bench by the sidelines.

“I didn’t want to stop.”

“You shouldn’t overwork yourself.”

“This isn’t overwork.” Hyoudou picks up his waterbottle and fills his mouth sloppily so some of it spills over his lips and down his chin. “It’s endurance.”

“You plan to be out here all night?”

“No. Just finishing.” He sighs and sits down on the bench, rubs at the back of his neck. His lips are set in a hard line with the tinge of a frown. Minamisawa’s heart constricts are he rides out the silence. Hyoudou speaks with a finality, a stubbornness. “We can’t do it tonight. Or tomorrow.”

“Why not?”

Looking for some way of distraction he tries to sip from the black coffee in his hand, only to remember it’s already empty. All he manages are a few last drops that aren’t even cold anymore.

There is probably a good reason. A normal one. He knows that. Some part of him has to know that, the part of him that functions like a human being.

The hungry, impatient part of him does not care about the answer.

It doesn’t stop the hand constricting his heart from digging in its nails and stopping the bloodflow to all of his limbs. The seconds it takes Hyoudou to answer agonize. Tighter, tighter.

“I just don’t think it’s a good idea.” He frowns, brings his head up and looks Minamisawa dead in the eyes. “I don’t want it to affect your plays.”

He laughs at that, because it sounds stupid. It makes him sound petty, like he’s a girl, like he’s a virgin. 

Like someone hasn’t said those words to him before, just like this, with the same half-hearted fear.

Minamisawa Atsushi was not born with the heart of a maiden. He was born with something else, something with teeth and fangs and a lockjaw-like grip.

Lockjaw that’s clamped down now on its own tail, his own heart is collapsing on itself.

His throat swells, but he swallows it back down.

“Do you think nobody’s ever dumped me before a game before?”

Hyoudou chokes on his water. “I didn’t mean–” He coughs out loudly but raises a hand as though Minamisawa’s going to run and he’s got to catch him. But Minamisawa really isn’t going anywhere at all. He just waits. Swallows back the thickness in his throat again. Hyoudou pats his chest with a fist, clears his throat. Even in the heavy shadows of the stadium lights, it’s clear his face has lit up bright red. “I meant…like…isn’t it…hard to walk? After I…because it goes…” Hyoudou gestures in an upward motion with a finger, as though he’s trying miserably to explain without saying any of the words actually necessary.

A laugh chokes through the teeth biting into the soft flesh of his heart and soon it bursts out his throat. His chest lightens, the pace of his blood gently slows, though it doesn’t quite settle to something that’s normal.

“You mean because you’ve been sticking it in my ass?”

Hyoudou gives up pretending there is any other way to talk around this. “Yes.”

“I’ll be fine, you know.”

“Your running was a little stiff today. I don’t want that happening on Saturday.”

“Fine, then we won’t fuck. I can blow you or something if you’re gonna be that stubborn.”

He sits next to Hyoudou and turns towards him, but Hyoudou’s hand grips around his bicep and pulls them back so they’re forced to look at each other. Minamisawa’s eyes linger on his lips as they part.

“Why?”

The wind begins to whine but he doesn’t hear it. Everything falls deathly still and silent for that split second one-two of his heartbeat, but this time he’s the one being waited on for an answer. Inside his head Hyoudou’s word just echoes. He’s not sure he even understands what it means, what it’s mean to convey.

Why.

Why.

Why?

“Because you liked it?”

“Then…” Hyoudou takes off his gloves and sets them on the bench next to him, presses the tips of his fingers together and rolls and cracks his joints. His palms are still bright red from the practice, covered in calluses and bruised at the knuckles. “Should I do you too?”

“Why? You don’t have to.”

“Then no,” he says softly. “Not now.”

There’s something that looks like a half-smile on Hyoudou’s lips, but it vanishes before he can even tell if it’s real. Hyoudou’s eyes linger on him. The iris burns into him like it always does, that red, but deeper in them there’s a gentleness he doesn’t understand.

He can’t stop the frustrated noise that escapes under his breath. From voracious and restless and wild to strangely chaste and stubborn and concerned. It feels…uncomfortable, somehow. He’s not sure if he knows who this is in front of him, or if he even understands.

“Go to bed,” Hyoudou says as he gets up. “I’ve gotta clean up these balls, but rest up. Double afternoon practice tomorrow. Didn’t you say you want to beat Raimon into the ground?”

“You could at least give me a goodnight kiss.” 

He intends to play it off as a joke, if that’s how Hyoudou’s going to be, but Hyoudou drops the soccer ball he’s holding. Minamisawa finds himself being indulged. A strong arm cradles his torso and pulls him in, softly presses their lips together. Hyoudou’s are wet, shining with water as he pulls back. His eyes shine softly too. Even in the absence of moonlight, somehow he glows.

“Go to bed,” he says again as he drops his arm from Minamisawa’s waist begins rolling the soccer balls into a large net bag. “You’re my striker. Rest up.”

His heart is starting to race again. He runs. Runs back across the shining grass. The air feels thick again and he can’t breathe but it’s not the pressure of a keshin. It’s not the keshin the pressure pulses from, it’s the user. 

Hyoudou’s pressure.

Hyoudou’s strength.

Later when he pulls the blankets up over his head and frowns, furrows his brows together and thinks about it all, he drowns himself in just that single, small word.

_Why._

Nobody’s ever asked him that before.


	5. minamisawa atsushi just before dawn

He dreams so little over the next two nights that he can’t remember if he’s actually slept.

He’s so wide awake with the thrill of adrenaline that he couldn’t sleep more even if he wanted to, even though it’s only five in the morning. He paces. Bites his lip. Does his hair, then redoes it.

It doesn’t kill nearly enough time, so he wanders down towards the cafeteria and lingers there until he hears the others begin to trickle out of their rooms. Breakfast is only an hour that’s cut short, and then the bus rumbles up to the doors to take them to Tokyo.

It feels strange that he’s going so close to home without actually going home.

The seat next to him is filled with someone large, heavy.

Familiar.

“Do you mind?” Hyoudou says, though he’s already in the process of storing his bag on the overhead rack.

“Nah. Go ‘head.”

And just like that, the three hours it takes to get to Tokyo start ticking down.

They mostly pass in oddly silent conditions. Compared to the bus of Raimon, which had always been filled with and not limited to: yelling, joking, laughing, eating and teasing, the bus of Gassan feels a bit sterile. Hyoudou’s been studying some papers on a clipboard for the past twenty minutes, tongue pressed against his teeth, eyes narrowed.

The clipboard catches Minamisawa’s eye ten minutes later, while he’s busy staring out the window and contemplating the early-summer greenery. The kanji stand out like neon lights. Shindou Takuto. Sangoku Taichi. Ranmaru Kirino.

Hyoudou notices his glance and smiles gently.

“Mostly double checks.”

“Can I see?”

Hyoudou hands it over and there it is. His old life all on paper, just smooth black strokes of ink. A few of the names he doesn’t even recognize. Has Raimon gotten that much bigger since the beginning of what should have been the end?

“I’m most concerned about your captain.”

“He’s not anymore.”

Their eyes meet and Hyoudou realizes his mistake–it’s one that seems to be easy to make, assuming that Minamisawa still has any loyalty or feeling towards his old team. He doesn’t.

That’s what he tells himself.

Hyoudou smiles. “Ah that’s right. It’s me now. Sorry I just…your…ex-captain? Shindou-san. From what videos I watched, he seems most dangerous.”

“Only if he’s backed by good people,” Minamisawa says, gesturing towards a few of the names…Kirino…Sangoku…he pauses at the name of Tenma, that incredibly irritating Tenma, and cringes a little at the memory. Still, there had been…something there. Perhaps it was not to be underestimated. “If you can remove Shindou’s assets, you remove his abilities. God’s Baton is only as good as the players under it. If you can’t reach the path he’s shown you, then it’s useless. God’s Baton is seeing, but it’s the doing that makes it work. And we have easy counters.”

“So you feel confident?”

“I know a good team when I see one.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Hyoudou puts the clipboard in the smaller bag at his feet. When he brings his arm back up and shifts to get comfortable, his hand brushes Minamisawa’s. “It’s a better team with you on it, you know. You filled something I didn’t even know we lacked.”

His stomach quivers as he swallows, and he can’t help but push back his bangs, if only for a lack of something to do with his hands. Hyoudou’s looking right at him. He’s so close.

He can taste Hyoudou’s skin on the air every time he breathes in.

“What was it?”

“I don’t even really know.” Hyoudou’s eyes are full of him, his mirror image is being swallowed whole by that burning red. “If you asked me for one specific thing, I don’t know. But you fit here. You’ve learned our tactics, our strategy. On the field I can always see your back, the ten. And when I see it I’m finding myself thinking more and more that I’m relieved. We can rely on you. You’re just…part of us.” He swallows and licks his lips, and his hand brushes Minamisawa’s in a way that feels incredibly intentional. “I think that maybe it’s important to tell you this, I suppose. Before we go into this match, I want you to know that…we trust you. I trust you.”

The spots where their pinkies touch, hands resting next to each other on the seat, burns. If Minamisawa Atsushi knew what a love confession sounded like, he would think maybe this was one. It had that same feeling, those words, full of something more than just the meanings language assigned to them. Behind them was nearly an entire poem of things Hyoudou hadn’t said.

Heavy-lidded eyes still watch him, blinking. They’re not waiting for an answer yet. They know. Hyoudou knows. No matter what Minamisawa answers now, it doesn’t have any meaning until after he’s fought together with them on the big stage. Until he’s put his name on the line with Gassan Kunimitsu’s pride.

He will share victory over Raimon with them.

Hyoudou’s eyes know this. He lets himself be swallowed. He severs away any lingering feelings of regret in his heart and replaces them with mortar and stone.

He lets the red of Hyoudou’s eyes swallow his reflection completely.

In that red sea, Minamisawa drowns.

* * *

The ride to the stadium is endless.

He sits, hands resting on his knees in tight fists. Sangoku’s eyes refuse to leave his, and he feels like looking anywhere else is somehow losing. The liner has been designed this way for this exact reason.

He has to watch.

He has to watch as pairs of eyes continue to converge on him and he keeps a straight face even though it feels like holes are going to open up in his skin. Shindou’s eyes keep flickering, first to him, then Hyoudou, then the rest of the team down the line, then back.

He smiles, just slightly.

There is something in him that’s welling up, a feeling of overwhelming excitement. The taste of revenge is palpable, sweet.

None of them can control their subtle trembling.

“Did you join Gassan Kunimitsu knowing Raimon would be fighting with them?”

Shindou almost sounds a little hurt as he asks that.

It also sounds as though he’s already made his mind up to the answer.

A half-mask slips into place across his eyes as he answers, he feels it, feels the air of character he’s putting on just for Shindou. A little bit of extra arrogance for their own sake, to make them feel better about themselves.

He is the enemy here, Raimon is the hero of the story, the brave underdog he has been sent down to crush.

They might as well make it worth the while.

“I thought I’d teach you all a lesson in reality,” he says with a flash of a smile.

The anger and confusion brews into a small storm on the other side. He can see it in their eyes. They don’t understand.

It’s possible they might never.

It’s not even that he particularly cares so much about his school records, though keeping those looking polished is an extra benefit. But there’s a part of him that’s always felt a bit outside of it all. Raimon’s soccer is too warm, too bright, it demands raw happiness from those who play it.

There is no mercy for the hearts of those who waver.

And to constantly be in that ebb and flow, the push and shove of bitter disappointment and frustration from rigged matches and defeats against the joy of soccer is exhausting. Revolution is exhausting. Towards the end he even felt a bit unnecessary, as though somewhere along the way he’d wandered down another path entirely and by the time he’d realized, nobody had noticed or understood where he’d gone.

“You flow against a large current only to get swept under. I pity you, Raimon.”

Part of him doesn’t want to hurt them, doesn’t want them to hate him, to be angry with him.

But the part of him that severs the last sinews holding his heart in his chest ignores that feeling, spits out those heavy words that fall to the floor like stones.

“You bastard!”

“You won’t get away with this.”

They hiss and spit like snakes, writhing in their anger, their fear, the incredible thing that has become his betrayal.

Because that is clearly what this is.

That’s what it has to be.

They won’t accept it as anything else, they can’t. There is only one thing they will listen to, and that is the raw crush of a defeat through soccer.

“Cease!”

It is a voice that echoes with enough force to shatter a mountain. Strong. Assured.

It’s the same voice that has been slicing through him every week at practice, chipping away his weaknesses and roughness and polishing him into something that shines brightly.

“And who might you be?”

“Hyoudou Tsukasa. I serve as the captain of Gassan Kunimitsu.” His back is straight, firm. The ringing of his voice off the stone walls sends a chill up Minamisawa’s spine. Hyoudou’s eyes glance at him and the edge of his lip curls into a smile. “Minamisawa possesses magnificent soccer senses. His talents will bring further rewards to soccer for Gassan Kunimitsu, as well as the Fifth Sector.”

His stomach drops and the back of his throat closes up and there’s something rising inside his chest. Pride. His captain is proud of him, so proud as to defend him against his former team, his comrades. They have been together only seconds compared to the vast age of everything that has ever existed. Hyoudou has eyelashes that have been part of his life longer than Minamisawa.

But yet there is no hesitance in his loyalty.

Shindou says something. It sounds like nothing more than a vague hum, an angry drone of a boy with his jaw set far too tight and every hair of his body on end.

In the face of that, he smiles.

“It’s pretty clear to me which side is in the right.”

Sangoku clenches his teeth, makes a noise like a growling dog.

Minamisawa wonders how many of their texts are replaying on a loop in his mind right now.

Is it still lying if you actually told the truth the whole time? No, that question in itself is a false idea, because he knows it’s lying. If it wasn’t, he would’ve just told Sangoku outright the first time. But he couldn’t, so he talked around it with nothing but a few short words. There’s a term for it, isn’t there.

Lying by omission.

Hyoudou’s hand comes down strong and warm on his shoulder.

“Let’s go, Minamisawa.”

The touch sends a shockwave up his spine.

It feels like the ultimate public claiming of his body, everything he is. Their voices can reach across the track to him, but their hands can’t. Hyoudou is here, next to him. He can touch. He belongs to this captain now, this team.

For the briefest moment he wonders what it would feel like to show him all of the intimacies he and Hyoudou have shared, laid bare.

Maybe less is more.

“Let’s each do our best.”

He doesn’t look back at their faces as he turns away and leaves them all behind him.

It will all come out on the field.

* * *

The mud caked into his spikes is not enough.

The sweat running down the channel of his spine is not enough.

The bruise on his left knee, the two shallow scratches on his right that are beginning to crust with a thin coating of dried blood, are not enough.

There is not the emptiness he thought, the emptiness that for so long seemed to be the only thing to feel after a loss. There is the most conflicting feeling of being alive. There’s relief, a stone that’s been lifted. He had forgotten the feeling of satisfaction. In all the mindless seeking he’d done he’d forgotten how this feels, the feeling of being full.

Anything in him that had been hungry was quieted in that second half.

The bus on the way back is not even silent. There’s no mourning, no funeral for their pride. There’s laughter. Jokes. Games. All of them are scattered, stretched out on the seats, napping and stretching and lingering. Hyoudou’s no longer next to him but on the longest seat in the very back, arms covered in cooling patches.

Taking on a keshin, even with another keshin, is not something any mere human is meant to do so often.

He lets Hyoudou rest and pulls out his earphones, loses himself in whatever things he can find on his phone. It won’t stop with the Line notifs again, but they’re less irritating than before. Some kind of shame he never named has left him, and his fingers move over the keys effortlessly.

> **sngk01:**
> 
> we need a rematch
> 
> **amapan:**
> 
> u guys were sooo strong ✧⁺⸜(●′▾‵●)⸝⁺✧ we need to play again!!
> 
> **kurumada2:**
> 
> training sometime?? rematch?? that was the best!!!!!
> 
> **krrma011:**
> 
> now that we r talkin again will u train me 4 finals lol???
> 
> _mnmzawa is typing…_
> 
> **mnmzawa:**
> 
> maybe. i need 2 visit home soon.
> 
> _mnmzawa is typing…_
> 
> good luck, ill watch u guys.
> 
> _mnmzawa is typing…_
> 
> __mnmzawa is typing…_  
>  _
> 
> ___mnmzawa is typing…_  
>  _ _
> 
> but i know youll b fine.

That’s the first whole truth he’s told any of them in a very long time.

* * *

When they arrive back at the school, they are told there is to be no practice for the two days following. It seems there is a process involved with being stripped of rank within the Fifth Sector. Removals will be made, though they’re reassured the field will largely remain the same.

Most of them no longer have any gripe as long as there is a patch of grass left to play on.

They stretch their legs as they return to their rooms. They are not heroes, and not regarded as such. The banner wishing them victory still hangs from the roof outside, but there’s a strange, sad sarcasm to it now.

As he swipes his key to the outside door, it slowly begins to rain.

It stays misting into the evening, and the entryway becomes home to mud-stained tennis shoes and damp umbrellas by the dozen. Hyoudou is not at dinner, and Minamisawa presumes the infirmary, but when he goes to look it’s dark and empty, all the curtains open and the beds without bodies.

That leaves only one place Hyoudou can possibly be resting.

He has yet to actually be inside of Hyoudou’s room. And, as logic would have it, that’s exactly where he is. Minamisawa can hear the sounds of someone shifting as he knocks on the door. It’s not half a second before it’s opened and Hyoudou is there, at first only distinguishable by furrowed brow and red eyes.

“Minamisawa.”

“Captain.”

“You don’t have to,” he says, and he covers it with a laugh, but there’s part of it that suggests he means it.

“Hyoudou.”

His face softens, and he gently smiles. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

His room is no different than any other. Wooden floors with a rug, low table and a desk covered in books, well-made bed with the standard issue navy duvet. Hyoudou retakes his spot on the cushion on the floor and motions for Minamisawa to join. The books on the table are strategy guides, stuffed full of loose papers, covered in pencil marks with dog-eared pages. There’s another Doreamon pencil laying next to a bottle of tea.

He must really like it after all.

Hyoudou brushes some eraser shavings off one of the charts he’s pouring over. His eyes keep flickering back and forth, like he can’t keep his concentration. He keeps licking his lips, chewing his tongue, and Minamisawa can see something turning behind those heavy-lidded eyes, someone stuck without knowing where to start.

He’ll have to start for them.

“They want a rematch,” he says with a grin. “All of them, they said it was fun. Someday the team’ll have to go there, down to Tokyo. Maybe in summer.”

“In summer,” Hyoudou says, and he swallows hard. “Summer’s close, isn’t it.”

“Few weeks.”

“You’re going back to Tokyo.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Hyoudou’s eyes are wavering. Bright, hot red coming closer, filling his vision, filling up every inch of his brain, Hyoudou’s hot palm coming around to cup his jaw and Hyoudou kisses him gently, softly. The kiss of a newly-unborn virgin. They haven’t really kissed like this, a proper set of mouths meeting, Hyoudou’s lips consuming his, Hyoudou’s tongue slipping between his lips, his teeth, stroking the insides of his cheeks, his gums, Hyoudou doing his best to devour with no skill or purpose.

He is cradled and brought down to the wooden floor with Hyoudou holding their bodies tight together. He makes his way down, slides up Minamisawa’s t-shirt, unbuttons his jeans, digs in all his fingers and undoes it all. His hands are hot. Hot hands that part Minamisawa’s naked thighs, hot hands that overwrite all the times this has been done before, hot tongue that opens and curls around him.

Hyoudou Tsukasa opens him wide with a gentleness he did not know existed.

His hands find their way up to the damp hair sticking to the base of Hyoudou’s neck as he leans into Hyoudou’s fingers that curl inside him, fingers that stretch him open. He’s so hard as he rocks against those fingers, so hard as Hyoudou’s mouth bares down on his neck, hot breath ghosts against his throat and Hyoudou bites into him, sucks. The gentleness is there somewhere underneath, somewhere but it’s lost as Hyoudou’s teeth break the vessels in his tissues and stain him with what will become a bruise.

It hurts but it feels so good as it hurts it hurts and he can’t do anything but laugh as Hyoudou mouths against his collarbone, his chest, laps at his nipples and down each of his ribs. His fingers come out and his thumb holds Minamisawa open wide as he pushes himself inside and ah, this too is that feeling he’d forgotten.

Fullness.

All the times pulling Hyoudou down, down with him and this time Hyoudou has done it himself. He hadn’t even come here with this intention and he feels like this whole time he’s been drunk off something because Hyoudou’s inside him and time has blurred, he doesn’t even remember how they got here. All he feels now is Hyoudou, deep inside him, Hyoudou pressing against his insides, Hyoudou’s fingers digging into the flesh of his thighs. Hyoudou blinks but his gaze doesn’t waver. Those eyes never leave him, eyes round and red like the moon.

His thighs part like the sea as Hyoudou pushes deeper, his mind goes blank and he can barely hold himself. He has nothing but reflex that ruts his hips against Hyoudou, reflex that forces Hyoudou to push back, to bury himself. This is so different from the first time, from the times after that, it’s the same thickness, the same heat but something about Hyoudou’s eyes burn deep inside him. Hyoudou’s teeth scrape his bottom lip and he pulls out and turns Minamisawa over on all fours, pushes into him and his legs tremble, thighs already worn out long ago from the match give out. Hyoudou ruts against him, licks with his hot tongue all the channels of Minamisawa’s back, the dip in the center where it curves, his shoulder blades, bites him from the back and sucks down like anything less isn’t enough. This is becoming one. 

Hyoudou Tsukasa makes love to him for the first time there, on the floor of his room, on a moonless evening with gentle rain.

When he pulls out they’ve both made a mess of themselves. Hyoudou knots the condom and hides it in the trash under a layer of tissues while Minamisawa tries to remember how to move his limbs. He’s about to sit up when Hyoudou lifts him off the floor, pulls aside the bed covers with one arm and lays him down.

It smells like Hyoudou, but then again so does all of him now.

* * *

When he wakes there’s only a small desk lamp on and Hyoudou’s at the now-clean desk, the piles of books stacked around his ankles. His phone reads just past eleven. He’s been out a few hours. He sits up to sore muscles. On top of the match there’s now this soreness, the ache that radiates from his hips. He’s clean but still bare except for underwear, which he vaguely remembers Hyoudou helping him into.

Minamisawa pulls his jeans off the floor and shoves them on before bothering Hyoudou at the desk, resting his chin on that broad shoulder. Hyoudou’s sideburn scrapes against his cheek as he buries himself into that neck. A hand comes up, runs through his hair. 

Hyoudou never rests. He’s filling out new strategy charts, already going through the sheets and data from the game today. He’s got red pencil marks over so many things, small cramped notes that Minamisawa can barely read, dark lead written in such heavy hand that it nearly cuts through the paper.

He tries to think of something to say. There’s just the silence and the noise of pencil scratching, and something uncomfortable that hangs between them.

Between the curtains on the window he can see a sliver of the moon, hanging high over the mountains. It reflects in Hyoudou’s pupils when their eyes meet. He smiles. Hyoudou smiles back, with stiffness.

This is not the discomfort expected after all of this.

“Are you ok?” he finally asks, for lack of anything better.

“It’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t seem like nothing,” he says. “If it’s nothing, it’s an awful lot of nothing.”

Hyoudou doesn’t reply to that, but it’s the type of reply where he knows exactly what he wants to say, but his body won’t allow him to. The worst kind, Minamisawa can see it in his eyes, all the parts of him resisting the instinct to say whatever the truth is, to just let it fall bluntly like a stone. It’s uncomfortable. Anxiety begins to creep into his chest the longer the silence goes on.

He runs his hands through his hair, pushes back his bangs and they fall forward again into place.

“Was it bad?” he finally asks.

“The match?”

The frustration in him is rising. “Sex. We had sex. Was it bad? Is that why you’re angry with me?”

“I–” Hyoudou chokes as he turns in his chair to look at him. It seems like he’s trying to stop himself from shouting, from saying something he’ll regret. “No. No, it’s not that. It was good.” His expression softens the slightest, as though he doesn’t want Minamisawa to think that, as though that is that last thing that could ever possibly be wrong.

He leans forward against Hyoudou’s shoulder, trying to further that mood, trying to coax the warmth back. “You made me lose my mind,” he murmurs into the shell of Hyoudou’s ear. “It was more than good.”

His ears bloom red, and it creeps up his cheeks. His shoulders fall.

“I’m just–” Hyoudou takes one deep breath, then another. “I’m trying to figure out what to do during summer, once you’re back in Tokyo.”

“You can run practice without me for like two weeks,” he snorts.

“But after that.”

“After that I’ll be…back?”

“But you’re leaving.”

“To my parents, yeah, for two weeks.”

“You’re coming back?”

“Why would I not be coming back?”

Hyoudou breathes deep and buries his face in Minamisawa’s bare chest. His breath is hot, wet against the bare skin. He’s just resting, breathing deep, and Minamisawa is beginning to understand there has been something neither of them had the sense to clarify.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he mumurs into the top of Hyoudou’s head. “I don’t know why you thought I was.”

“I heard them invite you back,” he sighs. “Your captain said you always have a place at Raimon and I thought, since we couldn’t keep up…you’d take up their offer.” He looks so relieved that is seems like whatever is holding his body upright might only last a few seconds. All of the weight has left him. He runs his fingers across the muscles in Hyoudou’s shoulders, watches them melt under his fingertips.

“I told you he’s not.” He takes Hyoudou’s face into his hands and plants a firm kiss across his lips. “You know who my captain is,” he breathes. 

“I keep forgetting.”

“You’re going to have to work on that.”

He grabs Hyoudou’s arm and drags him back to the bed, tucks the blanket around and over their heads. Inside it’s hot, it’s suffocating but it’s them, just them in the darkness. He presses another kiss to Hyoudou’s lips before he lets both their heads out to breathe. Hyoudou wraps an arm around him from behind, buries his head into the back of Minamisawa’s neck. He’s warm, so warm against his back that it burns through his skin, into his bones.

He hopes Hyoudou never lets go, even if it means he burns to death.

“Don’t leave me,” Hyoudou murmurs into his back and his lids begin to close. “That’s a captain’s order.”

By the time he thinks of a reply for that, the only other thing awake is the moon, watching him through the curtains. Hyoudou stirs against his back, but doesn’t wake. Nobody’s going to hear him, but he says it out loud, just to hear how it sounds.

“Never.”

In his dreams, the moon is round and red.


End file.
